The Dreaded Lurgy

from Jacqueline

This will be a quick, brief, snappy post.  I have the dreaded lurgy.  There is a red cross on my door, so all who step onto the drive with the intention of selling me windows, magazines, landscaping or whatever they hawk, they will know full well that they might well leave with the plague.  I am assailed.

I have a cold.

My head feels like this ...

and sometimes like this ...

My nose like this ....

and I am leaving a trail of screwed up tissues wherever I roam.

The only thing for it, of course, is this ...

either neat, or in the form of this ...

A hot toddy is the only good reason to have a cold.  I have several recipes, mostly including brandy, Manuka honey, lemon and hot water. In the days before I realized I was lactose intolerant, I would put brandy and honey into a mug with hot milk.  That's a knockout and worth a few hours sleep.

I also make my own cold remedy from oranges and lemons I pick myself, a sort of sloppy marmalade to which you just add hot water and brandy - ok, that has a kick to it.

So, what's your favorite cold remedy?  I intend to try any offered today from the humble readers of Naked Authors.  And I promise I will do my level best to come back with something worth reading next week.  This week I have the lurgy.

Here's to your health, this weekend!

War and Remembrance

Patty here...

Today is Memorial Day, a national day of remembrance for members of our military who have died in service to this country. It was first observed as Decoration Day, commemorating those killed in the American Civil War, a number estimated at between 620,000 and 750,000. During my childhood, Veterans' organizations passed out paper poppies on Memorial Day, a tradition inspired by WWI, but it seems that practice has been lost because I haven't seen them for many years.

I've known only two people who were killed in battle. A neighbor died in Viet Nam in the early days of that conflict. I didn't know him well. He was older than I, but I never forgot him. On a trip to Washington, D.C. decades after his death, I found his name on the wall of the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. My fingers swept across the polished granite, feeling the weight of all those carved letters —58,272 service members killed or missing, many more than the total population of the town where I was born.

The second was my great uncle, Julius, who was killed in WWI in the Argonne on October 9, 1918 one month and two days before the Armistice. While he was gone long before I was born, my mother, who was the keeper of family stories, preserved his legacy in our collective memories. His history is not unlike other soldiers who are serving in our military today: He was an immigrant. Julius was born in Russia to German parents who came to the U.S. to find a better, safer life. He was from a large family of hardworking people who were grateful to be living in the U.S.


Julius was a corporal in the 364th infantry, 91st division. He had been in France for only four months when he died. Colin V. Dyment described Julius’s death in a letter to his mother.

"In the Argonne men of the 91st not infrequently turned to a comrade close by, only to find him gone west, killed so quickly that he had neither moved nor uttered a sound."

He was buried in France next to several of his friends. In his pocket they found a letter to his mother that he had written in pencil two days earlier. It was removed from his clothing before he was buried and anchored on top of the grave with a rock.

A fellow doughboy found the letter sometime later, stained by mud and rain. There was no address just a reference to Julius’s hometown. The soldier carried the letter with him for eight months until he returned to the United States and tracked down Julius's parents, my great grandparents. Julius’s last letter is still in our family grab bag of relics from the past. I share part of that letter today because his words seem poignant and universal.

"Tell everybody hello for me and to write to me, even if I don’t write. I don’t get much time. I’ll have lots to tell when I get home. I have been through just about all of it once and I have a pretty good idea what it is now…Mother, it is getting dark and we are about to move to another place, so I’ll have to close. Don’t worry about me. I am sure the Lord is with me and that He will stay by me to the end. If it be His will that I stay here, I know that we will meet again in a better land where there is no war."

Dear Uncle Julius,

I hope you found that land where there is no war and please know that even ninety-five years after your death, your family still remembers you with tears of grief and pride.

Love,
Patty

The Monster In My Elbow.

from Jacqueline

I guess I've not been paying attention over the past year, or perhaps, what with one thing and another, my mind has been on other things.  Things other than my personal safety, that is.  I've told you all about the case of the flying horse manure that ended up in my eye - and I am still dealing with the infection.  She who is really, really sensitive to antibiotics has been given just about everything ending in "cin" or "cyn" over the past year - amoxy, neo, tobra ... you medical types will get the picture.

To no avail.

Now for the story of the cactus needle.

As you may know, I spent much of last year in England due to the fact that my Dad was very ill with the sudden onset of a rare blood disorder.  He passed away in early July.  My brother arrived from California a few days before he died.  John and I both ended up living here in the Wild West, something I attribute to early conditioning by my Dad.  He loved westerns, and so we watched westerns on TV on Sunday afternoons (for some reasons, that's when they were on British TV).  Those wide open spaces called to us, I guess.

But I digress.

I'd already bagged the spare room, so we'd set up a bed for my brother in the conservatory.  I was in the process of pulling down the blinds (so he wouldn't be blinded with sunlight first thing in the morning), and the one in the corner was stuck.  Oh, that would be the one in the corner next to The Monster.  The Monster is a cactus.  It began life as a very small cactus.  Thirty-odd years ago.  Now it's a big thing, with long needles.  I hate it. I do not like cacti.  Cacti are the plant version of reptiles, and I am not fond of reptiles.  I'm not fond of the desert either - I prefer green.  My people come from damp, so I prefer green.

I digress again.

I was fighting with the stuck blind, and probably because everything was pretty emotionally charged, I was bound and determined to get that thing down - I had to have control over something, I suppose.  I pulled and I pulled.

"Jack, forget it.  I'll be OK," said my brother.
"No, I'll unstick it ...." said I.
"Jack, you'll hurt yourself."
"I'll be fine, I just need to pull this cord, and -"

The cord snapped.  My elbow came down at about 50 miles per hour and hit The Monster.  I screamed.    "Heck," I said.  Only I didn't say "Heck."

I inspected my elbow. No blood, but a small bruise began to appear.

"Do you think there's a needle in there?"  I asked my brother, who was bleary eyed with jet-lag and with worry about our Dad.
"No, it would bleed - and you'd see a hole."
I inspected The Monster.  No needles seemed to have been damaged.  I iced my elbow.

The elbow hurt for some time afterwards, but calmed down eventually.  Then it would hurt a bit again, and the pain would come and go.  A couple of months ago I was fingering around the pointy underside of my elbow and I felt something.  A little something.  I asked my physical therapist about it (the one I've been seeing about my knee - that would be the knee injured last summer and on which I had surgery in February).  "That's odd," she said.  And she suggested I ask my orthopedic surgeon about it, at my next knee check-up.  Which was last Monday.

The knee was given full marks for being a good knee and getting better in good time - well done Jackie's knee.  Then I asked Dr. Mike about the elbow.  I told him the story of the stuck blind and The Monster, and pointed to the exact place where I could feel something odd.  By the way, Dr. Mike is the same brilliant guy who put me back together after my riding accident twelve years ago.

"That's odd," he said.
"Do you think it's a bone chip ... or a cactus needle?"
"Could be a bone chip.  But let's get an X-ray."
Then he told me that a cactus needle would not show up on an X-ray.
I had the X-ray.
"It's not a bone-chip," he said.
"Whaddaya reckon it is?" I asked, slipping into a cowboy tone.  Dad would have laughed.
"A cactus needle.  But we would have to do an MRI to make sure."
"Heck."
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I said.
We looked at each other, and agreed.
Let's leave it for now.

Have a good weekend, and be happy you do not have a monster in your elbow.

Travels with Nikki

From the messy desk of Paul Levine

I'm writing this aboard American Airlines 977 which was supposed to have just landed in Miami but instead we're on the tarmac in Tampa.  Thunderstorms.  No complaints from me.  Not after Jacqueline's tale of the farting dog in the bulkhead seats last week.

I am not a great traveler.  An especially bad flier.  As I've mentioned before, my lady and I are about to embark on an 1,800 mile road trip....with our old, mentally challenged, partially deaf rescue dog Nikki.

Nikki has never been farther in a car than the local dog park.  So we're entering uncharted territory that goes something like this.

DAY ONE:  With Nikki in a backseat dog hammock, we drive from Miami to Savannah, with pee stops for Nikki et al.

DAY TWO:  Drive through Georgia, South Carolina and into North Carolina where we've rented a cabin/cottage/summer home on the outskirts of Asheville.

The place has what every Miamian craves: a wood-burning fireplace.

DAYS 3-43: Asheville and surroundings.  Hike, bike, picnic, explore the Blue Ridge Parkway....maybe write a little.  Any suggestions from people who know the North Carolina mountains (or traveling with dogs) are appreciated.

Restaurant recommendations are not discouraged.  I am already smacking my lips over the fried green tomatoes and "Appalachian Egg rolls" (pulled pork in braised greens and pickled onions) at the Tupelo Honey Cafe.

Adventure ahead.  I'm not sure how the trip will go, but I assure you there will be no stops on the tarmac in Tampa.

QUICK NOTE: "The Deep Blue Alibi" is on sale for $2.99 for two days exclusively on Amazon Kindle. 

Paul Levine

Life or Death for Jodi Arias

Patty here…

Will she spend the rest of her life in prison or will she be sent to death row? Jodi Arias will soon learn her fate and so will we.

I came late to the Jodi Arias sideshow. For months I heard the name whispered breathlessly by trial watchers, but I was too distracted by life to investigate further. At some point, I asked a friend what all the fuss was about and was told that Arias’s eighteen days of testimony, outlining details of her sexploits was salacious. Pair that with the gruesomeness of the murder, and you had an intoxicating brew of “must see TV.”

As the trial neared its end, I finally watched an overview of the case. There is no disputing that Jodi Arias is a liar and a manipulator. She just isn’t very good at either. By her own admission, she’s also a killer. At that, she showed some talent.

 I listened to the questions posed to her by the jury and saw that they weren’t fooled by her transformation from femme fatale...

to dowdy defendent.

They also weren’t buying her self-defense argument. On May 8th, they found her guilty of murder in the first degree in the killing of her ex boyfriend Travis Alexander. She seemed unfazed when the verdict was read. Immediately afterward, she granted an interview with a reporter during which she said she preferred death to life in prison, that death was the ultimate freedom.

I do not for a moment believe that Jodi Arias wants to die. Her statement seems yet another ill-conceived attempt at manipulating the public and perhaps the jury. The woman should admit she suffers from a finesse deficiency and keep quiet.

The emotional pleas for death from Alexander’s family were difficult to watch. I tried, but failed, to imagine how I would feel under the same circumstances, listening for months to details of how a loved one died, wondering what pain he'd suffered. Their loss is simply unfathomable. However, I oppose the death penalty. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth on the issue but I now stand firmly in the “no” column for the following reasons:

• Spending the remainder of her life locked in a small cell seems like “just” punishment for Jodi Arias, because the rest of her life is a very long time.

• The staggering cost to California taxpayers to support a death row inmate is $175,000 per person versus $47, 421 per person for a regular inmate. Each year, California spends approximately $177 million on death row inmates. I assume the cost to Arizonans is much the same. To me, that money would be better spent on awarding scholarships to inner-city kids, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or any one of thousands of other worthy causes.

• Sometimes juries get it wrong. No doubt, innocent people have been executed. A small percentage, perhaps, but even one person is too many. 

If Jodi Arias gets death, we will be hearing much more about her in the years ahead, as the time it takes for death sentence appeals to go through the courts can take up to twenty years.

“The length of time prisoners spend on death row in the United States before their executions has recently emerged as a topic of interest in the debate about the death penalty. The discussion increased around the execution of Michael Ross, a Connecticut inmate who had been on death row for 17 years, and has been spurred by the writings of two Supreme Court Justices who have urged the Court to consider this issue.

Death row inmates in the U.S. typically spend over a decade awaiting execution. Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years. During this time, they are generally isolated from other prisoners, excluded from prison educational and employment programs, and sharply restricted in terms of visitation and exercise, spending as much as 23 hours a day alone in their cells. This raises the question of whether death row prisoners are receiving two distinct punishments: the death sentence itself, and the years of living in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement – a severe form of punishment that may be used only for very limited periods for general-population prisoners.

Moreover, unlike general-population prisoners, even in solitary confinement, death-row inmates live in a state of constant uncertainty over when they will be executed. For some death row inmates, this isolation and anxiety results in a sharp deterioration in their mental status.” 

In case you missed the trial, Lifetime has already completed a TV movie called “Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret,” slated to air on June 23.

Your thoughts?

Leaving Home ... and Homeward Bound

from Jacqueline

This is not a post, not in the usual way of my posts here on Naked Authors - but I am here in the Virgin America Clubhouse at Heathrow Airport, waiting for my flight back to the USA.  Been here a couple of weeks to see my Mum, and return to a crazy couple of months because I have a serious deadline looming.  I managed to hit just about everything on my to-do list - there's always a to-do list - and really, I wish I were going on vacation RIGHT NOW! I cannot remember when I last had a vacation.

So, before you think I have won the lottery, being in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse and all that, let me just say that some years ago I decided I would not use my accrued Virgin miles to get a free flight, because I could never get the date I wanted from the airport I wanted, so instead, it's easy - I use those miles to upgrade.  Can't always do it, but if I book far enough in advance, it works just fine - and believe me, on a 11-hour flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, that cushy seat in Upper Class makes me feel less like Quasimodo running from the bells when I get off the darn 'plane, jet-lagged and less than gruntled.  I just hate that term, "Upper Class" though, because, really, I hate elitism.  But what can you do?  I think I'll just have another glass of bubbly while I work that one out.

Whatever anyone thinks of London - I usually spend a few days in the nation's capital on these trips home, though most of my time is spent in rural Sussex - London is by far and away the country's economic powerhouse, with investment coming in from across the globe.  And it shows.  Culturally, it's hopping, more than anything I ever experienced even twenty years ago.  Walk down the street and you hear every language under the sun spoken, and the restaurants are amazing (I know - London has finally moved away from the stigma of food overcooked in lots of water to make the best of wartime rationing).  And here's the interesting thing - there's money about.  People - ordinary people, not skillionaires, although I am sure there are a goodly number of them on the street - are dropping a lot on eating out, on clothing, cars, and, well, the things people with disposable income buy.  Perhaps it's all on credit, who knows?

A friend I had dinner with last Sunday - he works as a consultant to large corporations on developing customer service strategies - told me that Britain is basically being kept afloat by two things; London's golden economy and Scottish oil.  Two ends of a country keeping up the middle.  Perhaps that's true anywhere you go in the world - I'll have to think about it, and not being an economist, I can't comment. But I do know this.  Walk around London and you are always aware of its history.  On Tuesday morning I meandered alongside the Thames as it swept past Chelsea, and there it was, a working waterway since before the Middle Ages.  There were the water taxis, the lighters tied to a pontoon in the center.  The tide was out, and as I looked down at the mud and scanned for treasure, I imagined the mudlarks of Victorian times - another booming age - who would search high and low for anything of value fallen from a ship coming into the docks, or from the pockets of sailors having had too much to drink.  My mind skipped a century, and I could imagine the searchlights at night, as bombers came during Hitler's Blitzkrieg to hammer those same dock - and along with it the lives of so many east-enders.  And I looked at former warehouses, now upscale apartment buildings.  London, like New York, like Boston, Paris, Berlin, Shanghai or Madrid - is an old city with its ancient bones showing. But there's something these cities know that the younger inhabitants don't know yet, those star-struck whizz kids, and I guess many of us have been there.  It's that every dog has its day.  What goes up, must come down.  And every booming economy floats on an underbelly, which, in my humble experience of life, is most raw when the gold on top is shining brightest.

(I have an original of that poster, by the way)

So, that's it from me.  My flight will be called soon, and I might just have that glass of champagne now. While I can. The air miles are running out!!!


What are you up to this weekend?

Turns out I wrote a post after all ....

Ten Things That Make Me HAPPY

By Cornelia

1. This excellent news from The New York Times, because, as my sister says, "There are two kinds of food in the world: food that's good, and food that needs more salt."

No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet

2. My new house, and having all my books under one roof for the first time in five years... also, Pierre Deux armchairs for SUPER CRAZY CHEAP off craigslist:

(Note: these are only three of the shelves. There are ten shelves so far. I think I have to buy more from IKEA. I love IKEA.)

3. The view from my new room (TREES!)

4. Having my own lilacs to smell for the first time since I lived in Boulder (Which was, like, ten bazillion years ago or something.)

Also, they might be boarding some horses in the barn, soon. Which would be awesome. Because I think horseshit actually smells good. And also I will not have to feed them, or muck out the stalls. Because even though I'm rather fond of the smell of horseshit, I haven't missed mucking out stalls in the thirty-odd years since I last did it. And I was never really great at it. So I hope this writing thing works out. (I also hugely suck at waitressing.)

5. The paint colors my landlord let me pick out. Especially since I didn't actually have to do any of the painting.

I may have posted this already. BUT I REALLY LIKE THE COLORS.

6. Did I mention salt? I love salt. Like, SO MUCH. More than those colors.

7. My firstborn, even though she's shaved half her head:

8. Still getting to hang out in the city, even though all my books are in the country. Especially when I get to go to groovy restaurants on someone else's expense account. Or just really cheap Chinese-Cuban diners if dinner's on me:

View of Chrysler building from restaurant terrace Sunday night... and here's view of Central Park from last night:

9. Getting to go to the Fox upfronts yesterday:

10. Flavored salts from Williams-Sonoma:

11. (BONUS!) Having my co-conspirator like the first two chapters I wrote of our thriller novel. Which starts in Moscow and in which I got to mention the Gulag prison-gang guys who found a frozen wooly mammoth and ate it. Raw. Because that's the kind of trivia I love to collect. (Does woolly have two L's? I can't remember.)

12. (DOUBLE BONUS!) What my firstborn wrote on Facebook on Mother's day:

"so my mom is awesome, infinitely beautiful, and brought me up by teaching me that debutantes can be foul-mouthed feminists who read encyclopedias of serial homicide for fun, which is probably the best lesson a woman could learn. i love you bunches, Cornelia Read, thanks for being so fucking cool."

What's making you happy, dearest Fellow Nakeds?